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Hawks With Good Intentions – I See Hawks In L.A. & The Good Intentions (reviewed by T. Bebedor)

It’s long been said that music has no borders and because of this it can bring people together, regardless of background or culture, solely based on their shared love for a kind of music. This is the case here.

I See Hawks In L.A. are an alternative country band from California and The Good Intentions are a folk duo from Liverpool, but due to repeated meetings over the years and having shared the same stage, they discovered the differences and similarities in the differing styles of writing and playing which, eventually, produced the cleverly titled ‘Hawks With Good Intentions’.

Within the ten tracks there are songs that are more country and some that are more folk but the two genres blend together so well that the whole exercise feels natural, one can only imagine the amount of emails with sound files being sent across the Atlantic for review and discussion but it kind of works.

If you like your songs heel-trodden like the body of a well-worked tractor, this is for you, no shiny Nashville production gimmicks here and the stories set within the songs are meaty and welcomed, forget the songs about prom night and hoping Bobby the quarterback will finally notice the ugly duckling at the back of the hall, no, this is working man country, tales of travelling across the nation in pickup trucks and stowed away in cargo trains listening to the clatter of the tracks as another state comes and goes.

‘Hills On Fire’ is perhaps the most calm and chilled song I’ve heard this year, beautifully stripped back to allow ‘Hawk’ Victoria Jacobs to slowly make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It’s a triumph in bridging the gap between two musical genres, folk and country never feel too far away due to the song subjects and instruments used but as an example of two worlds meeting and finding common ground, it’s brilliant.

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Published by Dave Franklin

Musician, scribbler, historian, gnostic, seeker of enlightenment, asker of the wrong questions, delver into the lost archives, fugitive from the law of averages, blogger, quantum spanner, left footed traveller, music journalist, zenarchist, freelance writer, reviewer and gemini. People have woken up to worse.
View all posts by Dave Franklin